Administration Part 3

Administration Part 3

Welcome to the One Life 5 minute Leadership Podcast. This is part 3 on administration.

We first looked at how every great event and every good organisation is birthed out of a big idea – this creative thought. It’s then got to have strategic application applied to it. In other words you don’t just have creative ideas for the sake of creative ideas. You also have to include the right people in the process of putting this plan together. A detailed action plan and some reliable executors who will action this for you comes next. In Administration Part 1, we saw how brilliant Jesus was at doing that.

In Part 2 we looked at how you practically work this out and the importance of building your reputation as someone who can be dependable.

10 Ways to Enhance Your Credibility

Today I’ll look at 10 ways to enhance your credibility – so that people can rely on you – and then share a couple of ways you could potentially really mess it up.

BE RESPONSIVE

First, we look at that dreaded phone and your emails. If you don’t answer your phone or reply to messages, and if you don’t return the calls you said you would, people will find it hard to take you seriously.

WRITE IT DOWN

When you commit to something you should find out what the timeline is, the priority, the urgency of it and put that in your diary. You should write it down. You should write down what you commit to. I’m amazed how many people come to meetings that don’t write things down. You know that they have good intentions, but you also know they’re going to forget things.

GIVE FEEDBACK

If a project takes longer than a day or two, you should give progress reports to those depending on you, just to keep them up to speed and to let them know that you’re still on the job. This will enhance the understanding that you can be depended upon.

KEEP THEM UPDATED

If there is a change or a major alteration, giving a short headline that something has changed is a great idea. Don’t assume that everybody knows everything that’s going on.

DON’T DROP THE BALL

It’s so important to understand the full weight of the implications of something not being done. If you’re providing eats for an event and you don’t pitch up – instead of facilitating relaxed fellowship, it’s going to make for a very awkward relating time. If you don’t pitch up to do the sound; it’s going to be a dreadful event!

CARRY THE WEIGHT

You need to understand the repercussions of ‘dropping the ball’ and be able to pre-empt it and compensate for it. It’s also really important to make sure everyone knows that you fully comprehend the severity of not doing what you’ve committed to doing. There is nothing worse than having someone who drops a ball, and everything falls apart, and then they treat it as if it didn’t matter. To ensure that you have a reputation of being someone who can be depended upon – understand these implications.

DON’T ALWAYS SAY “YES”

I know a lot of guys who say yes to everything. They’re hang of a nice, but you know they’re never going to get round to doing it. When this guy puts up his hand, you know you had better get somebody else to help him with it, because that nice guy is going to forget or just never get to it.

TO-DO VS PRIORITIES

I strongly suggest that you don’t work on a to-do list. If you have to do lists, generally speaking, the stuff you didn’t do today will be added to tomorrow’s tasks. Your to-do list just gets longer and longer and longer. Rather make a priority list and then deal with the most important things first, every single day. This way you can avoid the loud things, the noisy people and the issues that aren’t really important but that make a fuss, from crowding out your day.

KNOW YOUR ENERGY FLOW

Have a very good understanding of when you do your best work. I don’t work well between 13:00 and 16:00. I have a real trough in my energy levels then, so during that time I do things that don’t really require a lot of head space and energy. I get a second wind after 16:00, and I’m really on fire in the mornings, so I put the all strategic stuff in those time slots.

DELEGATE WISELY

Think carefully about who you are going to delegate tasks to. If something has been delegated to you, you can’t simply delegate it on to someone else and just say it’s their fault when things don’t work out. If you delegate to someone else, make sure they’re reliable. Think through who, give that person deadlines, make sure you get feedback, and if they don’t do it, it is as if you didn’t do it. You can’t pass the buck. If you said yes to something and you delegate it to someone else, you need to make sure that that person gets the job done.

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY

A couple of things that will really break down your reputation, as someone who can be depended on, is if you blame other people when something doesn’t work out. If it doesn’t work, fix it. If a thing is falling apart, fix it. If you blame other people you will never be depended upon again.

MAKE A PLAN

Don’t accept roadblocks. Don’t accept no. If you have undertaken to do something, you need to hit that thing head-on; climb over it, go around it, try to dismantle it – don’t just say I couldn’t do it.

“Why didn’t you bring the eats?”

“The caterer went on strike.”

No! Find another one!

“I couldn’t do my duty as a sound engineer.”

Why?

“Uber was on strike.”

Get a bicycle. Make a plan!

If you break something, tell people that you broke it. If you’ve lost something tell people you’ve lost it.

THE END GOAL

Finally, when you work, work as unto the Lord. In other words, if you get a reputation of people understanding that you’re doing it for the Lord with all your heart, you will be relied upon! Ecclesiastes says that a good name is better than perfume. Proverbs says that a good name is better than silver or gold and more highly esteemed than riches.